This post seems to me to be so incredibly self-evident (from my own anecdotal experiences in education) that I am amazed that nobody spent the time to write it down. Doug Belshaw has a blog where he lists (as part of what appears to be his scholastic work to get a PhD in education) several things which teacher generally forget to do in a classroom environment or as a teacher in general.

It is worth noting that every teacher that I am aware of knows these things quite well, since they are harped upon regularly in education school. Here is the list:

10 things educators forget to do after teacher training.
http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2011/04/14/10-things-educators-forget-to-do-after-teacher-training

I’d be interested in your reflections on the following as 10 things educators tend to forget to do after their teacher training and NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher) year:

· (1) Read academic journals.

· (2) Greet students at the door.

· (3) Write about their lessons – what went well/badly.

· (4) Mess about with technology for the sake of it.

· (5) Rearrange their classroom regularly.

· (6) Phone parents/guardians for positive reasons.

· (7) Active learning – role-play, etc.

· (8) Observe good practice elsewhere.

· (9) Maintain a professional development folder.

· (10)Ask for help and mentoring

I have taken the liberty to number this list from Mr. Belshaw’s website to allow me to deal with a few of these topics in a rational manner. You see, some of these tasks are more important and the lack of them is more obvious than for some others.

Some of the obvious things I have seen as an observer, a student teacher, and substituting in other classrooms would be the tremendous lack or documentation and reevaluation of lessons (point #3). I think that there are a lot of teachers under very little day to day (professional) scrutiny, to the degree that I have very rarely seen lesson plans other than a quick sentence or two (or else some long turgid lesson plan which has been used (and unevaluated) or years and years)). The fact is that developing the skills to effectively critique the results of lessons of fundamental to good teaching practices (i.e. to try to do the best you can for your students…).

I should throw in a predicate here…as I have mentioned already, my own ANECDOTAL, and personal experiences relate to this list pretty closely, there are quote certainly great throngs of effective and engaged teaches out there who are serious about maintaining their practice of the profession of teaching (likely some which may be reading this post…I hope!).

I have never even heard of a teacher who actually calls parents on a regular scheduled manner (to work to develop a relationship with their students’ parent) (#6). I have also rarely seen teachers take the time to rearrange classroom furniture more than once every six months… (#5)

At this point, I would love to hear from some teachers out there, as to what they think about the value of the tasks on this list, whether this is even pertinent to them, and what other things should be on a list like this (more things which we should be developing the discipline to encompass in how we practice as teachers…).

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